A key focus of this blog is the history of Jacksons in Ireland. I am specially curious about those who may be related to Sir Thomas Jackson (1841-1915). His life is key to understanding how a dozen or so young men, sons of Irish tenant farmers, shaped the future of international banking in the Far East in the late 1800s. I also use this blog as a place for playful posts: book and restaurant reviews, recipes, and events in my life. WARNING: Note the date of each post. Some may be outdated.

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Sunday, January 27, 2013

Pierre Berton was not only a top notch, popular history writer in Canada
in the mid-20th Century, but he was also renowned for his personal generosity.
Once he donated considerable coin to help fund and make possible a conference for
writers, some of whom had publicly accused him of being a privileged, racist,
old, white man. It takes real generosity of spirit to realize that when people make
such hurtful comments that it might be because of their own hurts, and also that it is worth
learning more about the source of their pain. Pierre was that kind of guy with
that kind of spirit.

For many years, he and his wife Janet also hosted the AGM after-party
of The Writers Union of Canada at their home in Kleinberg. The food was
spectacular, and many of the recipes can be found in the cookbook they published
in 1974. At the first of these parties that I attended, I was 28 years old, and
had been invited as the common-law spousal pontoon of Andreas Schroeder. Close
to forty years later, we are still each other’s spousal pontoons. And a good
thing that is.

At this particular party, the food tents were set outside, and
the drinks were served indoors. The chat amongst the writers became more
brilliant and animated as the afternoon wore on. Pimms #1 was the secret, a
beverage that tastes something like a mix of dry sherry, orange peel and then a
hit of brandy or gin. Waiters clad in black and white uniforms glided around
the living room with countless bottles on hand. There was no such thing as a
glass half full. Time and again, I was so intent on either talking or listening
that I hadn’t registered that my glass had been refilled.

It was only when I excused myself to go to the washroom that
I realized I was in trouble. My clue was how hard it was to locate the lever in
order to flush. Returning to the living room, I took Andreas aside, and
suggested that we had better leave before I disgraced myself. He agreed, though
he claimed not to be similarly afflicted. We said our goodbyes, the door closed
behind us, and both of us strolled out to our car. Or we tried to. Twenty paces
off the porch, a slight decline in the lawn caught us by surprise and we both went
ass over tea kettle. Driving back to Toronto was clearly not an option, at
least not right away. We hid out in our car, seats in the recline
position, and chatted until dusk.

I think of Janet and Pierre, and other such stories, every
time I cook from their cookbook. It could only have be written after raising
eight children on a limited budget and entertaining dozens on weekends on a
regular basis. No wonder the first chapter is called On Tribal Feeding.

A few weeks ago, I was asked for their salad dressing recipe
after I had used an adapted version for a cohousing meal. It has many uses. It is
thick enough that it can also be used as a spread on sandwiches. With a few
tweaks and omissions, it can even be made vegan friendly. Here is my take on it,
modified so that it works for both vegans and vegetarians.

Caesar Salad

1 c Olive oil

1/3 c red wine vinegar

Juice of ½ lemon

1 c grated cheddar cheese
(use vegan “cheese” when serving vegans)

1 tsp dry English mustard

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp oregano

2 T Worcerstershire sauce
(there is a vegan-friendly version that does not include anchovies. It is stocked at our local IGA)

Friday, January 25, 2013

Annelise Connell, standing on a table to view this embroidery, was my mentor, host, and guide during my
recent trip to Hong Kong.

NOTE: These photos are shared courtesy of The Hongkong and
Shanghai Banking Corporation.

I can’t recall who had the thought that I should make sure
to see this particular embroidery, but whoever you are – thank you. Seeing it in the flesh was a stunning experience. My
only regret is that I couldn’t spend even more time absorbing the feel of the
detail. It is huge, measuring: 5’ by 9½’. Thomas and Matthew, two of the archives
staff, had to set out close to a dozen banquet tables before unfurling it for
our viewing.

A
1902 news account described the attempted
presentation of this embroidered scroll to Thomas
Jackson in Hong Kong at a banquet celebrating his life in the Colony. I say
attempted, because the embroiderers, Kam
Lun & Co. in Canton, were unable to complete the work before Jackson had to
sail for England. Robert
Ho Tung, the merchant who hosted this tribute to Jackson, explained: ...
we are handing you the address in its
present form, as it has not been possible for us to get the embroidered work
done in Canton in time before your departure. It seemed to us that, got up in
characteristic Chinese style, the Address may be a more interesting memento to
you from the Chinese.

We should be thankful that Kam Lun & Co. cared enough
about their craft that they didn’t do a rush job. This embroidery is nothing
like one of those mass-market embroidered scrolls that can be found these days
in great profusion in some of the lower priced stalls at Stanley Market. It is
a superb work of art, both in its design as well as its execution. Every
individual stitch that was sewn into the silk backing was perfectly executed.
It took thousands upon thousands of stitches to produce this final result. I
would love to know more about Kam Lun & Co., but our dear Brother Google is
silent on this score.

A heron in the bottom right corner of the embroidery.

I also regret that my photos of this embroidery don’t entirely
do it justice. In real life, each bird, each flower, each creature, each
embellishment looks as if it had been painted
on the silk, not stitched into place.
The stitches are so fine that a viewer actually has to be as close as eight
inches away before being able to discern the individual threads. At home, I
have enlarged the photo, which I have in a higher resolution than I am able to
share here, and have studied the progression of individual elements. Unfortunately,
I do not know enough of the meanings of peacocks, herons, dragons and the like
to be able to tease out a narrative. I suspect that there is an intention
behind the placement of each element, and hope that someone reading this may
have a clue or three that they might be willing to share.

All I know so far about the meaning of the four large characters
in the middle of the embroidery comes from a letter where it is said that they
are intended to be read as a metaphor: He
is the man of whom the poem “Autumn Winter” reminds one. The letter writer added:
Written on a lucky day in May 1902. If
anyone out there can translate the other words which are surrounding the four
characters, I would be most grateful. I am also curious about which particular
poem of the thousands of Chinese poems that mention Autumn Water that this one might be. I have tried to find it online,
but am none the wiser. There are too many of them.

On last thing. Yes, this embroidery was commissioned to
honour the banking accomplishments of Sir Thomas Jackson, as well as for his
significant volunteer and philanthropic efforts, but that was not all. More
importantly, as Robert Ho Tung stressed in his presentation, it was also because
of the kindness and sociability that Jackson
had extended towards the community of Chinese merchants. In the long run, I get
the feeling that this is what mattered most to many members of the Chinese merchant
community. They had counted Jackson and themselves not only as colleagues, but
also as friends.

Thanks to Helen
Swinnerton, Senior Archives Manager of HSBC Archive in Hong Kong; Matthew Edmondson, Manager Archives Collection and Thomas Warren, History Manager - both in Hong Kong; Tina Stapes,
Global Head of Archives, London. Annelise Connell who made sure I took the
right public transit in order to arrive where I needed to be.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

One of my volunteer gigs is to cook a meal once a month with
two friends for the members of Roberts Creek Cohousing. As we cook, we chat
about this and that: family news, dreams, politics – you name it. If the menu
is not too challenging, we also take time to listen carefully to a particular
piece of music, or share some poetry. You can’t beat it for a way to spend an
afternoon. That is, unless you try to poach 40 apples in Saltspring Island port
for dessert. So, I won’t say much about that debacle. We turned that particular
mess into high end apple sauce.

Instead, since so many asked for it, here is my recipe for My Accidental Vegan Veggie Pie. I am
calling it accidental, because I am
not a vegan and when I started in on this recipe I was mostly guided by significant
doses of guess and by golly, but that is the beauty of these afternoons. We are
often required to cook outside our usual culinary box.

That night, we were cooking for 40-45 people, 10 of whom
were vegetarians and 3 of the vegetarians were vegans. For the omnivores, I was
on more experienced territory. We made half a dozen turkey-vegetable pies using up
frozen left-over Xmas turkey and stock. Easy, peasy.

That being said, I will in the future cook this vegan pie
for my own home meals. The trick is the gravy:

Mushroom Miso & Mustard
Gravy

3T vegan butter substitute

2T olive oil

1 medium onion, finely chopped

2 generous cups finely sliced mushrooms
(about 1/3 pound)

1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

3 1/4 cups vegetable stock (If
store-bought, I prefer Knorr– some of the other brands smell like old
cabbage or unwashed socksto me)

3/4 cup dry white wine

2 cloves garlic, peeled and quartered

1 generous tablespoon golden miso (aka sweet
white miso)

1 generous tablespoon dark miso (aka traditional
red miso)

3 tablespoons nutritional yeast

1 T Dijon mustard

Salt and freshly ground black pepper,
to taste

1. Melt the butter and olive oil together in a large skillet over medium heat
for about 1 minute. Add the onion and sauté, stirring often, for about 4
minutes, or until the onion begins to soften but doesn’t caramelize. Raise the
heat slightly and add the mushrooms. Continue cooking, stirring often, for 5 to
6 minutes more until the mushrooms are soft.

2. Turn the heat down to medium and sprinkle the flour
over the onion, mushroom mix. Stir quickly as you would when making a roux until
all the flour is absorbed and has cooked into the rest a bit. Then slowly add
the vegetable stock, and stir until it is well combined. Allow it to simmer for
5-10 minutes. Do this until it is thickened, but not like glue.

3. Pour the wine into a
suitably sized bowl, and add the garlic, golden miso, dark miso, nutritional
yeast, and mustard. Whisk them well together, and then then whisk them into the
stock and veggie mix.

4. Reduce the heat and let
the sauce simmer very gently, stirring occasionally, for about 30 minutes, and
then set aside.

The Vegetables for
the Pie

While the gravy is simmering, chop whatever veggies you want
in your pie. Quantities are flexible. Use whatever you have on hand, enough to
fill whatever size of casserole dish you are baking the pie in. We used
potatoes, carrots, parsnips, and onions, and cut them into large thumbnail
sized bits, enough to fill a 13”X9” dish. Then we tossed the chopped veg in
salt, pepper and olive oil, and roasted them at 400 F for about 25 minutes
(check them after about 20 minutes. You want them to be slightly caramelized,
but not blackened.) Once they were cooked enough (the main idea is to reduce
the water content and thereby to intensify the flavours), we added sliced mushrooms
and peas.

Mix all the veg into the gravy, and pour into a Pyrex baking
dish, and top with pastry.

Pastry

My pastry recipe is something like (approximate, because
after doing it for 5 decades, I don’t really look any more):

·2 ½ c organic white flour

·½ lb shortening

·1 tsp white vinegar

·½ c or so of water – enough so that the dough
coheres.

Bake for about 30 minutes at 375F.

These amounts will serve 6-10 people, depending on how many
are adults and how many are children. Bear in mind that teenage boys count as
if they are three adults. Fair enough.

Monday, January 21, 2013

An excerpt from a
speech delivered to the Hong Kong branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in
November 2012. Since then, I rewrote it a bit to better suit the format of a blog.

The early days of the British Colony of Hong Kong benefited
from the fact that men such as Thomas Jackson, the renowned Hong Kong banker of
his day, grew up in Ireland experiencing life on both sides of the table –
Colony and Empire. It is also worth noting that the 19th century government
of Hong Kong was thick with Irishmen. At least eight
of the early Governors had Irish ancestry. Clearly, most of them knew how
to play the game. It also probably helped that by the time that Hong Kong
became a Colony in 1841, England had already learned a trick or two from its long-term,
botched management of Ireland, not to mention having learned from the
taxation-without-representation debacle in America. Been there. Done that.

When I look at Irish history up to 1841, the year that Thomas
Jackson was born and Hong Kong became a Colony, there are three long-term,
inter-generational realities worth mentioning. Their effects shaped
the values and actions of these Hong Kong Irishmen, whether they had arrived to
govern or to conduct trade. They included the experience of:

Unfair land ownership policies coupled with a lack of urbanization.
For centuries in Ireland, power and wealth had been based on owning land.
The laws were heavily skewed in the favour of the landlord, who was all
too often absent and based in England. The Irish economy was essentially a
rural economy, with little urbanization. Ireland had no coal, or major
industries, aside from the linen trade, so the fuel to build cities simply
wasn’t there. The country’s culture was essentially rural.

The impact of proxy wars.These wars which were fought by France
and England and others in Ireland over several centuries resulted in a
dangerously militarized countryside. This meant that most males were
skilled at fighting, either as members of a formal army on the one side,
or as guerilla activists on the other.

A cultural chasm that divided people along religious, political,
and economic lines. As a result of the proxy wars as well as the effects
of land ownership policies, Ireland was deeply divided. This polarization obscured
the fact that policies governing land ownership and voting rights were the
more likely roots of the divide - not religion. Religion was often
exploited as a diversionary proxy for what was really wrong.

It is easy to see how Ireland’s history could have served as
a cautionary tale to Irishmen in places of power in Hong Kong. Add to this, the
fact that most of these Irishmen who served in Hong Kong had lived in Ireland
during the Great Famine, or had family who did. The focus of the book that I am currently writing is Sir
Thomas Jackson, so I will stick to how all this influenced him.

Jackson served as the Chief Manager of HSBC in the mid to
late 1880s. At the time, the Bank could almost have been called The Irish Bank of Hong Kong - at least going
by the numbers of Irishmen serving in the upper levels of management.Many of them came on his coattails. Most of these
managers were also related to each other, partly by blood and partly by the fact
that they’d grown up on neighbouring farms. Photos of them in Hong Kong wearing
suits and holding top hats can be deceiving. Three realities particular to
their class are worth mentioning:

Until they had come to
Hong Kong, most of them had been wearing shirts that were hand-sewn by
their sisters.

Their education was not at
the prestigious schools favoured by the British banking class.

Most of them grew up
eating their family meals in the company of the hired help.

Andrew Hugh
Gilmore JACKSON, the man on the right, was a nephew of Sir Thomas. Like
his uncle, he grew up as a farmer’s son, and then worked at HSBC. Later, he
worked as an independent broker. He died in Hong Kong of Hong typhoid fever
in 1918. He is buried at Happy Valley, just across the street from the Race
Track that he and his uncle often frequented. The surname of the person on the
left is MOORE. I know nothing more of him.

I’d like to touch briefly on four ways in which Jackson’s
childhood experiences, both at the macro-level of Irish history, and the micro
level of life on his family farm, influenced his actions as a banker. This is
just a taste. There is much, much more to say and to learn about all this.

Firstly, he never stopped his practice of reaching across the class
divide. He usually ate his mid-day tiffin with the young bank clerks, even when
he was Chief Manager. He had a saying
that rubbing the old file against the young flint brings out the best
qualities of both. Members of the Chinese
merchant community also appreciated his inclusiveness. At a banquet in 1902, they celebrated the unvarying kindness and courtesy
exhibited by you towards us as a distinct class. Unlike many other
Europeans of his time and place, Jackson was remarkably free of racism.

Secondly, he and his board resisted the pressures to move the head
office from Hong Kong to London – even though the pressures to do so were
considerable. As realtors always say: location,
location, location. What this meant for the early Hong Kong banks was that the
ones that failed had head offices elsewhere and became too
disconnected to be attuned to the needs of the Chinese community. Unfortunately, HSBC
eventually had to leave the island as a result of WWII when Japanese troops overran Hong Kong, and imprisoned
their staff. Several HSBC staff lost their lives at this time. Some of these
men were also Jackson’s relations. One of them had been baptized with his name.

Thirdly, Jackson insisted on investing the bank’s profits where
those profits were made. One consequence
of the Bank’s policy of investing locally was that since local businesses felt
that they were supported and could trust in that ongoing support, they flourished.
As a result of the successes of local businesses, even more coin flowed into
the bank’s coffers. This commitment to the local community was another reason
why HSBC survived the currency crises of the 1890s, a time when many banks bit
the dust. Adding to this commitment, Jackson also set an ethical standard by
not lining his own pocket in side deals. Had he done so, he could have retired
as a much wealthier man, but he saw this as a conflict of interest and felt the
need to set an example.

Fourthly, he took good care of his staff. Pensions, decent pay,
medical care – you name it. Better than the norm. He set up a staff cafeteria, and
insisted on supplying good quality food. As his daughter described it, he was
so
much afraid that the clerks would be tempted to save money
by buying cheap and inadequate food instead of having the dinners they needed. When
he first retired, few men would have acted as he did just before taking his
leave. The Bank’s balance sheet was in great shape, thanks in part to
his efforts, but he deferred the announcement of the Bank’s profits so that his
successor could get the credit. You don’t have to be a genius to imagine the
positive effects of that on bank morale.

There is at least one last thing that may or may not be
fairly attributed to his roots. Lucky
Jackson, as he was also known, was a gifted currency trader. Did it help
that he had grown up hearing stories of a cousin from Co. Louth who ran silver
mines in South America? Did he learn as a result what kind of news mattered in
currency trades and what kind of news didn’t? I can only guess. And what about the
influence of his wife’s roots on his work? She was definitely a force in his
life. Did it also help that she was the child of a Singaporean merchant,
ship-chandler and ship captain and had several brothers and brother-in-laws who
shared all the latest gossip about ships, silk, tea, silver bullion and opium? Probably.
But more of that anon.

Grave marker at Stanley Military Cemetery in Hong
Kong. Thomas Jackson Houston, a great-nephew of Sir Thomas Jackson, died of
dysentery while a prisoner of war. He had been married in Hong Kong, and had
taken his wife, Margaret, who was about to give birth, to Australia for
safety. He arrived back in Hong Kong just in time to be captured. OBITUARY - DIED IN HONG
KONG Mr. And Mrs. J.K. Houston, 14 St.
Jude's Avenue have been informed of the death, in a camp at Hong Kong, of
their son, Mr. T.J. Houston, B.A. of the Colonial Administrative Service. Mr.
Houston had a brilliant scholastic career and in 1934 won a Mathematical
scholarship in the Cambridge University examinations. He was a pupil at
Methodist College and gained exhibitions in both his Junior and Senior
Certificate examinations. He entered Queens University in 1930 and two years
later was awarded a Major Scholarship at Christ's College, Cambridge. In June
1933, he obtained a first-class honours degree in mathematics and
mathematical physics at Queen's University.

About Me

Author And Researcher. I am currently writing a book on the life of Sir Thomas Jackson. He was the son of tenant farmers, born just before the Famine in South Armagh, who was knighted because he not only lead HSBC into the 20th Century, but was also responsible for assisting with the funding of much of the economic development in China & Japan in the late 1800s. My first published book was "Some Become Flowers: Living with Dying at Home".